When working in After Effects, you will often find a need to make a duplicate of a pre compose. You might think that this is easy! I have to tell you: yes, that this is really easy, but you have to pay attention to a subtle point when duplicating the pre compose.
Duplicate Pre-Compose
First of all, you need to know what you will do with the pre compose that duplicated?
If you want the copied pre compose to be exactly the same as the original pre compose, you can select the desired pre compose layer in the Timeline panel and press Ctrl + D or navigate to Edit menu and select Duplicate.
With this you will have two same pre composes. (As expected.) Note that in this case, changing one of the pre-composes will change both of them. This method can be useful in cases of need!
For example, you can make several duplicates of a pre-compose and arrange them in the composition, and then whenever you want to make a change in all of them, you should just change one of them.
But what if you want to change each one separately after duplicating?
If you duplicate the pre composes according to the previous method (select the pre-compose layer in the Timeline panel and press Ctrl + D), by changing one will also change the others. So, that method is wrong.
if you want to change each one separately after duplicating, you need to duplicate the pre compose from within the project panel. After that you can add duplicated pre compose to the project by drag it to Timeline panel.
Now you know when you want to make duplicate a pre compose, how to duplicate it according to your project.
For better learning, we suggest you to watch the tutorial video: How to Duplicate Pre Compose Correctly
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